The invention relates to producing white wheat flour and a raw dough, having an extended refrigerated shelf life, made from the white wheat flour. More specifically, the invention involves heat treating a milled, high ash grain stream to deactive enzymes in the high ash stream and combining the heat treated high ash stream with one or more other non-heat treated streams in forming a combined white wheat flour used to make a raw dough exhibiting the extended refrigerated shelf life.
Refrigerated dough products are popular with consumer and commercial users due to their ease of use and ability to maintain freshness during considerable periods of refrigerated storage, e.g., conventionally up to 90 days. Still, it is a continuing goal in this field to improve the potential storage period of refrigerated dough products, while maintaining the quality or stability of the dough.
For some types of dough products and dough product ingredients, storage stability can be more difficult than for others. An example of a class of dough product that can be particularly difficult to store for extended periods of time is white flour doughs made from wheat grains. At the same time, white flour dough products made from wheat grains are often specifically desired by consumers such that a refrigerated raw dough made from wheat grains which exhibits extended refrigerated storage stability would be quite desirable to consumers.
The difficulty in storing wheat doughs, as well as wheat flours and other wheat food products, is mainly due to enzymes that are naturally present in wheat grain and can cause spoilage. Enzymes are significantly more concentrated in the wheat germ and wheat bran portions of a kernel, and are less concentrated in the much larger endosperm. More particularly, when the wheat grains are milled, various streams are formed. The enzymes are particularly prevalent in the bran and germ streams which are typically utilized in making whole wheat but not “white” flours. Therefore, in connection with white flours or doughs made therefrom, generally only low or medium ash/bran streams from the endosperm are employed such that enzyme levels are inherently low. Of course, as only a reduced number of streams are utilized, the amount of white flour which can be produced from a given quantity of wheat grains is reduced and the resulting product does not include potentially beneficial attributes which would come from the use of other milled streams. Processes for preparing whole-wheat flours, on the other hand, retain the germ and bran, as well as the relatively high concentrations of enzymes. These enzymes become part of a finished whole-wheat flour, or a dough or other food product made from the whole-wheat flour.
Because many consumers specifically desire non-whole wheat food products, including food products made from raw refrigerated white flour dough, it would be desirable to enable an additional stream from the milled wheat grains to be employed in connection with making non-whole wheat or white flours and, more preferably, a refrigerated dough product from the white flour. It would be further desirable to enable the produced dough to retain its freshness for extended periods of refrigerated storage.